The Lost Years

  For the rest of that morning—if such grim, lightless hours could be called morning—we trekked across the open tundra. The soil crackled under the weight of our feet. Heading toward the notched ridge, we followed no roads or trails, though we crossed several. Yet the roads were as empty as the village that had been burned to the ground.

  Conversation was just as sparse as the surrounding vegetation, and almost as brittle, for both of us knew how easily we could be spotted by anyone loyal to Stangmar. Even when Shim reached into the pocket of his shirt and offered to share a hunk of ambrosia bread from Cairpré’s pantry, he did so without speaking. I merely nodded in thanks, and we pressed on.

  As the land gradually lifted toward the Dark Hills, I did my best to guide us. Although the notch no longer stood out against the sky, as it did during the brief glow that had passed for sunrise, it remained barely visible. Yet it seemed to me less a sign of the route than a sign of foreboding. Suppose we somehow passed through the notch, and even made it to Stangmar’s castle, only to find that Rhia was not there? Or worse, that she was there but no longer alive?

  Every so often, we encountered sparse signs of habitation. An old house here, a dilapidated pen there. Yet these structures seemed as lifeless as the landscape. They sat there, rotting, like bones on a beach. If anyone still lived there, they lived in hiding. And they existed somehow without trees or gardens or greenery of any kind.

  Then, to my surprise, I sensed a subtle splash of green ahead. Thinking it might be just a mistake of my weak vision, I concentrated on the spot. Yet the color seemed real enough, contrasting with the rusty browns and grays on all sides. As I drew nearer, the green deepened. At the same time, I detected the outlines of trees, arranged in regular rows, with some sort of fruit clinging to their boughs.

  “An orchard! Can you believe it?”

  Shim rubbed his nose. “Looks dangerously to me.”

  “And see?” I pointed at a boxy shape behind the trees. “There’s some sort of hut in the cleft of the hill.”

  “I thinks we better stays away. Really, truly, absolutely.”

  Whether because the green trees reminded me of the Druma, or because the hut reminded me of my days with the woman I now knew to be my mother, I felt curious to learn more. I looked down. “You can wait here for me if you want. I’m going closer.”

  Shim watched me depart, swearing under his breath. A few seconds later, he trotted to catch up to me.

  As he approached, I stopped and turned to him. “Smelled some honey, did you?”

  He growled. “Goblinses, more likely.” Nervously, he glanced over his shoulder. “But even if no goblinses are there, they is not far away.”

  “You can be sure of that. We won’t stop long, I promise. Just long enough to see who lives there.”

  As we neared the orchard, I discerned a rough stone wall bordering the trees. It was made of the same gray rock, splotched with rust-colored lichen, as the hut. Judging from the gaps and toppled portions of both, neither hut nor wall had been repaired in quite some time. Just as the crumbling wall embraced the trees, the trees themselves embraced the hut, flowing over its roof and sides with leafy branches. Beneath the boughs, several beds of green, speckled with brighter colors, thatched the ground.

  I crouched, as did Shim. Cautiously, we crept closer. A fresh aroma wafted over us, the scent of wet leaves and newborn blossoms. It struck me how long it had been since I smelled the fragrance of living, growing plants. And then it struck me that this was not just an orchard. This was a garden.

  Just then a pair of shapes, as gray as the stones in the wall, emerged from the hut. Taking wobbly steps, the pair slowly advanced toward the nearest bed of plants. They moved with an odd, disjointed rhythm, one back straightening as the other curved, one head lifting as the other drooped. As different as their motions were, however, they seemed unalterably connected.

  As they came nearer, I could tell that these two people were old. Very old. White hair, streaked with gray, fell about both of their shoulders, while their sleeveless brown robes hung worn and faded. Had their backs not been so bent, they would have stood quite tall. Only their arms, muscular and brown, seemed younger than their years.

  The pair reached the first bed of plants, then separated. One of them, a woman whose strong cheekbones reminded me of my mother, stooped to retrieve a sack of seeds and started working them into the soil on one side of the hut. At the same time the other, a man with a long banner of whiskers waving from his chin, picked up a basket and hobbled toward a tree laden with the same spiral fruit that I had tasted at the shomorra tree. Abruptly, the old man halted. He turned slowly toward the spot where we crouched behind the wall.

  Without taking his eyes off us, he spoke in a low, crusty voice. “Garlatha, we have visitors.”

  The old woman looked up. Though her face creased with concern, she answered calmly, in a voice that creaked with age. “Then let them show themselves, for they have nothing to fear.”

  “I am T’eilean,” declared the man. “If you come in peace, you are welcome here.”

  Slowly, we lifted our heads. I stood up and planted my staff on the ground. As my hand brushed over the place that had been raked by teeth only hours before, a chill passed through me. Meanwhile, Shim rose beside me and squared his shoulders, although only his eyes and frantic hair poked above the top of the wall.

  “We come in peace.”

  “And what are your names?”

  Feeling cautious, I hesitated.

  “Our names is secret,” declared Shim. “Nobody knows them.” For good measure, he added, “Not even us.”

  One corner of T’eilean’s mouth curled upward. “You are right to be cautious, little traveler. But as my wife has said, you have nothing to fear from us. We are simple gardeners, that is all.”

  I stepped across the wall, trying not to crush the slender yellow vegetables growing from a vine on the other side. I offered a hand to Shim, who pushed it aside and climbed over the jumble of rocks unaided.

  T’eilean’s expression became serious again. “These are dangerous times to travel in Fincayra. You must be either very brave or very foolish.”

  I nodded. “Time will tell which we are. But may I ask about you? If it’s dangerous to travel here, it must be more so to live here.”

  “Too true.” T’eilean beckoned to Garlatha to join him. “But where could we go? My wife and I have lived here together for sixty-eight years. Our roots are deep, as deep as these trees.” With a wave at their unadorned home, he added, “Besides, we have no treasure.”

  “Not that could be stolen, that is.” Garlatha took his arm, smiling at him. “Our treasure is too big for any chest, and more precious than any jewels.”

  T’eilean nodded. “You are right, my lady.” Leaning toward me, he grinned mischievously. “She is always right. Even when she is wrong.”

  Garlatha kicked him hard in the shin.

  “Owww,” he howled, rubbing the spot. “After sixty-eight years, you should have learned some manners!”

  “After sixty-eight years, I have learned to see right through you.” Garlatha looked at him full in the face. Slowly, she grinned. “Yet, somehow, I still like what I see.”

  The old man’s dark eyes glittered. “Come now, what of our guests? Can we offer you a place to sit? Anything to eat?”

  I shook my head. “We have no time for sitting, I’m afraid.” I pointed toward the spiral-shaped fruits dangling from the branch. “I would take one of those, though. I had that kind once before and it was wonderful.”

  T’eilean reached up and, with surprising dexterity, plucked one of the fruits with his large, wrinkled hand. As he gave it to me, he said, “You may certainly have this, but you have not had its kind, the larkon, before.”

  Puzzled, I shook my head.

  “These grow nowhere else in Fincayra,” explained the gardener, his voice solemn. “Years ago, long before you were born, trees bearing them dotted the hills east of the River U
nceasing. But they have succumbed to the Blight that has afflicted the rest of our land. All but this one.”

  I took a bite of the fruit. The flavor like purple sunshine burst inside my mouth. “There is one other place this fruit still grows, and there I have eaten it before.”

  In unison, T’eilean and Garlatha asked, “Where?”

  “In Druma Wood, at the shomorra tree.”

  “The shomorra?” sputtered Garlatha. “You have truly been there, to the rarest of trees?”

  “A friend who knows it well took me there.”

  T’eilean stroked his wispy beard. “If that is true, you have a remarkable friend.”

  My face tightened. “I do.”

  A slight breeze stirred the branch above me, rustling the living leaves. I listened for a moment. I felt like a man, deprived of water for days, who finally heard the sound of a burbling stream. Suddenly, Shim reached up and yanked the spiral fruit from my hand. Before I could protest, he took two large bites.

  I glared at him. “Don’t you know how to ask?”

  “Mmmppff,” said the little giant through a mouthful of fruit.

  Garlatha’s eyes shone with amusement. Turning to her husband, she said, “It appears that I am not the only one without manners.”

  “You are right,” he answered. Hobbling a few steps away, he added with equal amusement, “As always.”

  Garlatha grinned. Her strong arm reached up to the branch, picked another spiral fruit, and handed it to me. “Here. You can start again.”

  “You are most generous, especially if this is the last tree of this kind east of the Druma.” I sniffed the larkon’s zesty fragrance, then took a bite. Once again, my tongue exploded with sunny flavor. Savoring the taste, I asked, “How has your garden survived so well in the midst of this Blight? It’s a miracle.”

  The couple traded glances.

  T’eilean’s face hardened. “It is no more of a miracle than all of these lands once were. But our wicked king has changed all that.”

  “It has broken our hearts to watch,” said Garlatha, her voice cracking.

  “Stangmar’s Shroud blocks out the sun,” continued the old man. “More with each passing month. For as the Shrouded Castle grows in power, the sky grows ever darker. Meanwhile, his armies have sown death across the land. Whole villages have been destroyed. People have fled to the mountains far to the west, or left Fincayra altogether. A vast forest, as remarkable as Druma Wood, once grew on those hills to the east. No more! What trees have not been slaughtered or burned have retreated into slumber, never to speak again. Here on the plains, what soil has not been soaked with blood has taken on its very color. And the Flowering Harp, that could perhaps coax the land back to life, has been stolen from us.”

  He looked down at his weathered hands. “I carried the Harp only once, when I was just a boy. But after all these years, I still cannot forget the feel of its strings. Nor the thrill of its melody.”

  He grimaced. “All that and more is lost.” He motioned toward the cleft in the hill behind the hut. “See our once joyous spring! Hardly a trickle. As the land has withered, so has the water that nourished it. Half of my day I now spend hauling water from afar.”

  Garlatha took his hand. “As I spend half of mine searching the dry prairie for seeds that still may be revived.”

  Awkwardly, Shim offered to her the remains of his fruit. “I is sorry for you.”

  Garlatha patted his unruly head. “Keep the fruit now. And do not feel sorry for us. We are far more fortunate than most.”

  “That we are,” agreed her husband. “We have been granted a long life together, and a chance to grow a few trees. That is all anyone could ask for.” He glanced at her. “That and our one remaining wish, that one day we might die together.”

  “Like Baucis and Philemon,” I observed.

  “Who?”

  “Baucis and Philemon. They are characters in a story from the Greeks, a story I learned from . . . my mother, long ago. They had but one wish, to die together. And in the end the gods turned them into a pair of trees whose leafy branches would wrap around each other for all time.”

  “How beautiful,” Garlatha sighed, looking at her husband.

  T’eilean said nothing, though he studied me closely.

  “But you have not told me,” I continued, “how your garden has survived in this terrible time.”

  T’eilean released Garlatha’s hand and opened his sinewy arms to the greenery, the roots, the blossoms surrounding them. “We have loved our garden, that is all.”

  I nodded, thinking how wondrous this region must have been before the Blight. If the garden where Shim and I now stood was only a small sampling of its riches, the landscape would have been as beautiful—though not as wild and mysterious—as the Druma itself. The kind of place where I would have felt alive. And free. And possibly even at home.

  Garlatha observed us worriedly. “Are you certain you cannot rest here for a while?”

  “No. We cannot.”

  “Then you must be extremely careful,” warned T’eilean. “Goblins are everywhere these days. Only yesterday, at sunset, when I was coming back with water, I saw a pair of them. They were dragging away a helpless girl.”

  My heart stopped. “A girl? What did she look like?”

  The white-bearded man looked pained. “I could not get very close, or they would have seen me. Yet, while I watched, part of me wanted to attack them with all my strength.”

  “I am glad you did not,” declared his wife.

  T’eilean pointed at me. “The girl was about your age. Long, curly brown hair. And she wore a suit that seemed to be made of woven vines.”

  Shim and I gasped.

  “Rhia,” I whispered hoarsely. “Where were they going?”

  “There can be no doubt,” the old man answered dismally. “They were traveling east. And since the girl was alive at all, she must be someone Stangmar wants to deal with personally.”

  Garlatha moaned. “I cannot bear the thought of a young girl at that terrible castle.”

  I felt for the dagger in my satchel. “We must go now.”

  T’eilean extended his hand to me, clasping my own with unexpected firmness. “I do not know who you are, young man, nor where you are going. But I suspect that, like one of our seeds, you hold much more within than you show without.”

  Garlatha touched Shim’s head again. “The same, I think, could be said for this little fellow.”

  I did not reply, although I wondered whether they would have spoken so kindly to us if they had known us better. Even so, as I crossed over the crumbling wall, I found myself hoping that I might one day see them again. I turned to wave to the elderly couple. They waved back, then resumed their work.

  I noticed that the Galator felt warm against my chest. Peeking under my tunic, I saw that its jeweled center was glowing ever so slightly. And I knew that Cairpré’s theory about the Galator was true.

  31: THEN CAME A SCREAM

  For several hours, we trekked toward the notch in the ridge, my staff rhythmically punching the dry soil and dead grass. A cold wind out of the Dark Hills blew down on us. Its bitter gusts slapped our faces. Despite the wind, Shim did his best to stay by my side. Even so, I had to stop several times to help him through some thorny bracken or up a steep pitch.

  As the land sloped increasingly upward, the wind blew ever more fiercely. Soon it smacked with such piercing cold that my hand holding my staff no longer pulsed with pain, but started to go numb. It felt as wooden as the staff itself. Flying bits of ice began to whip against us. I lifted my free arm to protect my cheeks and sightless eyes.

  The bits of ice turned into needles, then shards, then daggers. As the icy blades rained down on us, Shim, who had resisted complaining since leaving the garden, whined piteously. But I could only hear him in the lulls between gusts, for the howling of the wind grew fiercer.

  Although it remained light enough for my second sight to help, the swirling ice and blowin
g dirt confused my sense of direction. Suddenly I stumbled against a low, flat outcropping of some sort. With a cry, I crumpled to the ground, dropping my staff.

  Shivering, I crawled over to the outcropping, hoping to use it as a slight shelter against the storm. Shim tucked himself into the folds of my tunic. We sat there, our teeth chattering from the cold, for minutes that seemed like weeks.

  In time, the ice storm abated. The howling wind hurled itself at us a few last times, then finally retreated. Although the air seemed no warmer, our bodies slowly revived. I opened and closed my hands, which made my palms and fingertips sting. Hesitantly, Shim poked his head out of my tunic, his wild hair embedded with icicles.

  All at once, I realized that the outcropping that had partially shielded us was nothing more than an immense tree stump. All around us, thousands of such stumps littered the hills, separated by a vast web of eroded gullies. Though frosted with a glaze of ice, the stumps did not sparkle or gleam. They merely sat there, as lifeless as burial mounds.

  In a flash, I understood. This was all that remained of the vast forest that T’eilean had described. Stangmar’s armies have sown death across the land. The old man’s words lifted like ghosts out of the rotting stumps, the bloodred soil, the broken hills.

  Shim and I looked at each other. Without a word, we stood up on the frosted ground. I picked up my staff, knocking a chunk of ice off the top. Then I located the notch again, stepped over the brittle remains of a branch, and started up the slippery terrain. Shim scrambled to stay with me, muttering under his breath.

  As the day wore on, we continued to climb, over hills scarred with countless stumps and dry streambeds. All the while, the sky grew darker. Soon the notch disappeared, swallowed in the deepening darkness. I could only trust my memory of where I had last glimpsed its two sharp knobs, though that memory itself was fading with the light.

  Slowly, we gained elevation. Despite the dim light, I detected a few thin trees rising amidst the stumps and dead branches. Their twisted forms resembled people writhing in pain. Seeing one tree wearing the bark of a beech, I approached it. Laying my hand on the trunk, I made the swishing, rustling sound that Rhia had taught me in Druma Wood.